Posted
by
michaelon Saturday September 11, 2004 @01:59AM
from the zesty dept.

`Sean writes "Pepper Computerdebuted their $800 Pepper Pad 2 at DEMOmobile 2004 this week. Specs include a 624 MHz XScale processor, 8.4" 800x600 TFT touchscreen, 802.11b+g, and 20 GB HDD running MontaVista Linux CEE. Out of the box the Pepper Pad 2 loads the Pepper Keeper as its GUI, but a full-blown Linux distribution with Java 2 JRE and X-Window System is sitting under the covers just waiting be customized. I personally can't wait to get a hold of one of these to turn into an OBD-II and telemetry workstation for the rally car."

It kind of already is a portable media player. The Pepper Keeper software looks like it will do most things you would need, and since there's a full linux system underneath, you can just install whatever players are missing.

I realize it is a lot cheaper, but I amnto sure it is worth it. Does the XScale processor pack the necessary punch? I know I have one (albeit a probably inferior one) in my Toshiba e740, which has many of the qualities this thing brags about.
Also, is this an actual touch screen? If so, this is unfortunate Having used Tablets before, I really enjoyed the special pens, and would think this would make a great picture.
Also, that thumb keyboard looks quite lacking, and considering they are not bragging about their handwriting recognition, it probably also leaves something to be desired.
At this point, I think I could get a lot more functionality out of a laptop or one of those tablets-that-runs-your-pc-iver-wifi things than I necesarily would this.

If you're looking for a tablet of some sort that you can draw on directly for photoshop and such, check out Wacom's Cintiq line -- basically an LCD monitor with a pen touchscreen. They start at $1500 and up for 15" monitors. A PC is required, though, to use them.
LCD Tablets [wacom.com]

Many of the Tablet PCs actually use touch technology from Wacom. If you use a tablet PC, you'll notice that the cursor moves when you hover the stylus above the touch surface - just like a Wacom tablet. Most Tablet PCs are also pressure and angle sensitive.

If they use a stylus with no batteries, then they're using wacom's patent. However, the technology is actually Nikola Tesla's, at least in terms of powering the stylus. Aside from that the technology for detecting pressure and tilt is not only pretty well known, but far too old to be covered by a patent.

For the hacker/cracker on the go, looking to break into all those Wi-Fi networks around pools, this model comes "[r]uggedized and splash resistant." Although one would not suggest one using any computer around a pool.

I've wanted this for months now. A "laptop" that instead of advertising the newest P4 processor for Barbecues (R) gives you low power, ARM (XScale) computing at the right price. Of course, It has to run linux. Good one!

600 Mhz is underpowered for high resolution MPEG4 decoding (you shouldn't have to reencode everything you download)... and underpowered for hand writing recognition (isn't that supposed to the the stregth of a pad?)... it comes with a stylus but hand writing recognition is only "almost working"? there is no composite video out (pads are usually good for presentations)... and the pepper pad looks like a pile of garbage... those little round thumb keys split on either side are silly...

Couldn't find any exact info other than the following in the press release [pepper.com]:
"It has a rechargeable lithium polymer battery with power management providing support for a day's worth of activities"

Comes only with USB 1.1, which is kinda slow for something that you'll want to transfer photos, mp3s, and video to. Also the 20g hard drive is a little tight for that purpose. I'd like to see one of these with usb2 or firewire and at least 80g on the hard drive. It would be nice if it had some kind of cover to protect the LCD too. But this looks pretty badass nonetheless.

...and anyone who would fork over $800 would think "I forked over $400 for my iPod and it has twice the storage space." Seriously, 20GB? WTF?!? Obviously they're trying to keep the price under that of a low-end laptop, but come on, ditch the bluetooth and put in a 50-100GB drive. Whats with only having SD/MMC? Howsabouts Compact Flash or SmartMedia? They're touting it for multimedia and they don't use the most common cards for digital cameras in favor of the most maligned and unsed format? HUH? Also, 256MB

The scroll wheel will be great for browsing web pages. What do you need a trackball or a trackpad for when you have a touchscreen? Also, 2.5" drives are much more expensive than 3.5" drives. I haven't seen a laptop with more than 80 GB of space. For a portable keyboard, use Bluetooth. SD and MMC slots take far less space than a CF slot, and both can be supported with only one slot.

I'm not getting one, of course; I already have an iBook. Still, it's not that bad.

Wireless networking would let me tap into my MythTV box from anywhere in my house, which is nice. I am not certain at the maturity of the project, but plex86 [sourceforge.net] deffinately ups the value of this device for me. I wonder how much tweakage would be necessary?

They could have done all that. Then they would have had to charge a lot more. They obviously decided that $800 was the most somebody would pay for something like this, and chose the features to fit within that boundary.

That was the first thing I noticed as well. USB 2.0 is standard on the even cheapest motherboards on the market today, so I can't imagine that it would have added more than a buck or two to the manufacturing cost. And it would have added a lot of new flexibility. My desired use, for example, is as a CarPC/Mp3 player, and a 20 gig hd isn't big enough. The easy solution, and perfectly appropriate for use in the car, is an external hd, but that's not an option here due to the slow USB.

It runs at 12Mbps. This is more than fast enough to bring MP3s or OGGs from the drive to your PepperPad and play them back in real time.

Granted. Perhaps I should have said "that's not a -good- option". What about copying 10 gigs of mp3s to the internal hard drive? Sure it can be done, but it will take hours. How about listening to mp3s from an external drive while copying files from a wired network? What about other applications that I didn't think of? My point was that, assuming the cost to add usb2 was

USB2.0 might be bog-standard on ever PeeCee motherboard available today, but that's not yet the case for every XScale, MIPS, or PowerPC System-On-a-Chip (SoC) eval board. A similar point should be made for IEEE1394 support as well.

My point wasn't that it was standard everywhere, only that the costs in implementing it would be negligible.I'll admit that I don't work in embedded systems, so I'm not all that familiar with the market, but I assume that the motherboards can be customized to the application. Ass

Well, most cameras, even if they use USB 2.0, only use Full Speed, which is the same speed as USB 1.1 anyway. If it's a 802.11g network card, you can transfer the MP3s and videos over the network; this thing doesn't have an optical drive to rip CDs, and I would use a stationary to download things anyway; just copy over when it's wanted. The small hard drive also neccessitates this. Won't work as a primary computer, of course, but as a complimentary device it'd do quite well. Assuming it's fast enough to run

1. Yea but does it run Linux?2. Imagine a beowulf cluster of Pepper Pads!3. In Soviet Russia the screen touches you!4.
4a. Design a superior piece of hardware
4b. Include a superior OS
4c. ???
4d. Profit!5. Netcraft confirms, Pepper Pad is dead!6. If it doesn't run [KDE/Gnome/desktop of choice] then it sucks!

If he doesn't have one right now, then there's probably a pretty good reason. Maybe he doesn't have enough space. Maybe he has satellite or something and he'd have to rely on bunny ears to get reception. Maybe he specifically wants a "Watch what MythTV has recorded" device in his bedroom and making his current TV do that is a bit challenging. Maybe he doesn't want to spend $200'ish on a TV when he could spend $300'ish on something w

Ah, but he didn't come out and say that he was involved in the product. If someone sends something to Taco or Hemos saying "hey, we've got this great LINUX product I think/.ers would be interested in," I expect Taco or Hemos would post it. I would want them to post it. But I don't want any pretense.

Except it's the truth that I can't wait to get one myself. I don't have one of my own, and I certainly won't have one for quite some time since they're not in full-scale production yet. Ask any of my co-workers here at Pepper and they'll tell you that just about all I can talk about is hacking a Pepper Pad 2 into a motorsports toy.

Was my article submission astroturfing? Perhaps. Was it intentional? No. Was my underlying agenda an attempt to get photos of my rally car on Slashdot? You betcha.

It's a tablet, not a laptop. It's intended to run simple small applications and interface to other computers to do complicated things. They have teensy little USB hubs you can carry around, but I agree it should have more than one. Anyway none of the purposes you suggest would require more than a 600MHz processor. It's even enough to play full screen MPEG4 video, provided it's not overly high bitrate. I'm not sure what more you need in a tablet.

but I worry about the psychological impact of making computers look less like computers. People have been taught for the past few years that they have to keep their computers up to date with security patches, that they should have a firewall and a virus scanner... but this doesn't look like what people recognize as a "computer". It isn't even advertised as a computer; it's called a "web pad".

Combining the innate cluelessness of most of the people who will buy these, the fact that these don't "look like computers", the fact that these are wireless-only as far as networking is concerned, and the lack of apparent infrastructure for distributing security patches... I have to wonder how well these machines will fare once they reach the real (insecure) world.

True to a degree, If it boots Windows (and the explorer interface) its instantly recognisable as a "Computer", If like this it boots some wierd UI then it isn't, however this isn't prolly running services etc and *should* be locked down well / auto updated. The point is the UI is as important the the shape of the box to the user deciding if its a computer.

He's their webmaster, yes, and probably one of the engineers there as well. He isn't the whole company though, as you can see from their management team page - they are a legitimate, if not huge company, based in the building next to where my old company was based, down Hartwell Ave. for anybody who knows the area, in Lexington, MA. In fact, I know one of the engineers at Pepper (assuming he's still there).

Oh, I don't disagree, it's definitely astroturfing, but that's not exactly uncommon here. It would have been less annoying if it hadn't included that particular quote, which makes the whole thing sound disingenuous. Whatever, it's still far less annoying than the daily astroturfing that Roland Piquepaille fucker gives us for his blog.

What's worse, the "I personally can't wait to get a hold of one of these" makes it look suspiciously like astroturfing.

Or perhaps it was a genuine display of excitement about the product my employer is producing. Yes, I'm a Pepper employee, but that doesn't mean I get my own Pad to take home, hack, and play with in my spare time. So, quite literally, I can't wait to get a hold of one because one is not in my possession.

But where's the market?
You can buy a decent PC for $300, the keyboard looks too unsuitable to be used professionally and it's too big to used as a PDA.
So it is an overpriced, oversized PDA, with a clunky interface. Who really has any utility for that?

Hopefully it'll have better info-retention capabilities than my junior high Trapper Keeper:-)
Seriously, my main issue with contact managers are

Data Entry... and this has a full qwerty keyboard (tho it's arguable how usable it is, being so small keys)

Sync capabilities... palm was good, but ipod/iCal is better, and so is my SonyEriccson T610 that supports SyncML. Can't recount the number of times that I lost data due to bad sync or lack of sync {sigh}.

From the site's page [pepper.com] on PK, it looks pretty good. Gotta try the download and see if it's better than my palm desktop.

Hmm this might have been neat a year or so ago, but I'm a little underwhelmed with it. Just a couple of months ago I bought a Toshiba M-200 TabletPC. Granted, it's over twice the price of this guy ($2,000...) but lemme share with you the specs:

-Centrino 1.5 ghz processor.-1400 by 1050 resolution screen-512 meg of RAM-40 gig HD-It doesn't use the touch screen, rather the Wacom digitizer for the stylus. This means pressure sensitivity, but it means you can ONLY use the stylus for input.

oh yeah, right, i'm gonna overlook your $2000 investment versus an $800 investment, and just agree with you entirely on the specs/power/performance underwhelming...

forget it, fool. if you don't know the difference between $2000 and $800, send me $1200 and i'll tell you!

for $800 (hopefully thats just rrp), this is a stormin' accessory to my existing computing solutions. i'm gonna get one, just so i've got a nice, portable, useful linux machine around to hack code^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwrite worthwhile comput

" i mean, c'mon, you gotta crap on the Pepper because its 'underwhelming' compared to your $2000 system?"

Yeah I see your point, believe it or not. I get annoyed at people getting modded up for saying "It's not interesting!" Guess I'm guilty of that, too.

I should have spelled my thoughts out a little more clearly. For 2.5x the price, you get an actual laptop replacement with stronger capabilities, as opposed to a fancy PDA. In that light, at least from my point of view, it's easier to budget the money

" i.e. if you've got the money to spend, you get more bang for the buck in the end."

To be fair, this product doesn't even qualify on that level. You mention later in your post using it for web stuff, email, etc, but for that $800, there is a lot more you could do with a desktop machine. Heck, you can even get a superior laptop for about that much. Maybe chuck in an extra $100 or 2, but then you'd get more pixels to play with and a DVD player. That touch screen is a spendy proposition.

Heh. In other words, you at least want to get the final word. That it? Try to save at least some face here?

Must have stung worse than I originally thought. You have some growing up to do, my friend. If y u had been a bigger man in the first place, you wouldn't have found yourself in this position now. Now all you have left is name calling and begging me to drop it.

Actually, you can get a very good used laptop on ebay that will do everything one of these does, will run linux like a champ, and you can get it for $300 or less - heck, you can pick up a 266mhz machine with a 12" screen these days for as ittle as a hundred bucks. My own machine has a 13" TFT, 500MHz PIII, 320mb ram, a 20gb hard drive (with 18 months left on the warranty) and still could be had for less than what they are asking for this thing - and in another year the stinkpad will STILL be an actual pc th

So what you're saying is that this thing is a moped? The question then becomes, do you want your friends to see you on one?

Of course no one really drives a car, that would be a multi-headed PC. It's all motorcycles, one or two people can use it once at best, and the second person isn't in much control. I think we can all imagine the rest of this analogy so I'll stop here.

I mean the free download only runs on Mac or Windows. This says to me that they aren't really serious about Linux. I know that if it were built on WinCE I wouldn't expect the free download to only run on Mac and Red Hat.

I'd also like to know if they have modded any of the Linux or GNU tools/apps on the box. If so where's the source. If the source comes with the device, fine. The source doesn't have to be seperately available, or available to just anyone. It does however have to go back to the original

I believe those downloads are so you can run pepper keeper on your mac or windows box. It looks like pepper keeper is a combination window manager with a bunch of apps like media players and a web browser and so forth, probably with builtin pen-input support. I imagine the source code is included at least for the web browser since they say it is mozilla-based (or it may simply be mozilla, but I imagine they trimmed some fat to put it on here). It also looks like the linux system under the window manager

So just don't say anywhere on it that linux is supported. Say "Mac and Windows" and then spawn a java installer from an installer stub. Linux users can read on some forum out there somewhere that they can just run the java installer and take their chances...

God, I just downloaded the windows install and what do you know, it's a fucking installanywhere package. However, since it's a selfextractor, you can't use the windows package (at least) to install to Linux or whatever else. Looks like the mac version is a zip file, let's see what's in that. How do you like this stream of conciousness stuff? The Mac one seems to be a mac.app package, also nothing you can install from, at least not that I can see so far. If I run the Pepper.jar from %ProfileImagePath%\My

Pen input is good. I jury rigged a Zaurus to provide input for messing with graphics prior to getting a tablet. I liked it.

I got a tablet. After using it for a while, I realized what a great thing pressure sensitivity is. It's not just the touch screen that makes a tablet pc thing, all of those have wacom styluses for their input.

I've also noticed an area in which Linux lacks support badly: Handwriting recognition.

Is it just me or are people having similar issues with seeing the comments on this entry? When I first click it (every time) it shows 0 comments, when I refresh it shows them. It's done it across several browsing sessions.
But here's my babble about the article itself so this doesn't get killed as off-topic:
I would like to see a company spend more of their money to create proper handwriting recognition under Linux for such endeavors instead of half-assed QWERTY keyboards (which leaves out Dvorak users su